I'm thinking of going mussel hunting this year, but for that I'll need a fishing license, some good locations for hunting, and patience to wait for low tides. On the plus side, I found a new tide calculator, this one has a nice chart of how high and low the tides get.

So far this year, I havent made it out to Pacifica, although I hear the fishing is good. Instead, I made it to Maxim Market today and bought 2 Dungeness for about $11 - something around $2.50 a pound. One was quite good, with nice brown flesh under the carapace - the kind that hangs together, and isnt soup - and the second was a little lighter inside, but still nowhere near as bad as some I have bought.

"Help me, I'm melting!"

Decided to take the day off an go fishing on Monday, as the Bay Area is sweltering under a heatwave. I spent most of the day in the shade by Torpedo Pier, drinking water.

The fishing was somewhat poor, as I only caught a red, a brown, and a dungie (returned, but too small to feel bad about having done so). Both crabs were reasonably heavy though, and had some decent brown meat. The weather was unbearably hot, and the tide moved from slack to fast incoming while I was there. The red was caught in the slack, the brown just at the beginning of the tide.

Today I have installed a moon-phase calender on the blog, and maybe someday I'll find a tide indicator also.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear from others that are fishing out there; any tips are welcome, also any observations regarding best time to fish, and how it relates to time of day, tide, moon, weather, etc.

Work intrudes on my fishing

Recently, I have been supplementing my income. The pay is enough to buy a new trap and cage, so I'll be able to start replacing the rigs that the sealions have been munching. For some reason, the small traps used with rods dont seem to get attacked - maybe they're just harder to see. One experiment which might work, is to put some of the rod traps in the ring traps. But I suppose the ideal answer is to go to home depot and rig something up myself with chicken wire.

Fishing after storms.

Recently I wrote that I picked up some light crabs after heavy rains; well last week it rained really bad here, yet Thursday I picked up heavy crabs at Fort Point. Go figure! The fishing itself was lousy, because I turned up at low tide, and for the 4 hours I was around, the tide wasnt moving any which way.

The Lazy SeaLion was being as irritating as usual. I really need to construct a heavier kind of trap. I'm thinking some sort of steel cage, covered in finer mesh, which I can bolt directly to the inner ring of the trap. I saw something like a decent base for that in goodwill - regretting now that I didnt pick it up.

A second thought I have is to put a finer mesh also on the trap - see if I can pick up any shrimp.

Apparently there was a sewage spill over at Sausalito - maybe all the crabs were over there!

Friday 30 Jan, Fort Point

Another beautiful day, and as I'm still gainfully unemployed, I drove up to SF to try my luck crabbing at Torpedo Pier. I arrived fairly late, around 1 pm, set up my traps, with chicken carcasses spiced up with a little dried anchovy/squid. The traps were fairly quickly attacked, with a nice rock crab as soon as I had returned from the bathroom. Normally I'd throw these back when just over legal size, and especially when female, but it was heavy for its size, and it was the first of the day, so I put it in my bucket to keep me company until I caught something larger. Some passing german tourists looked like they needed camera subjects, so I gave them a starfish which kept them happy snapping for a while, and a brief play with my new found rock friend.

Strangely, there were only a couple of other lines in the water, and for once, the sealions werent patrolling. By the end of the day (4 pm), I had 2 more crabs, 5" red crabs, and had thrown back 2 legal sized Dungeness, as these are illegal inside the bridge. One was lovely and heavy. It was so tempting to shove it under my sweater....

By 4 pm, a sealion was back, and it ripped off my bait cage, a nice dishwasher cage I bought for a buck fifty at goodwill. Bas*ardo! That leaves me with the remains of an old cage on the other trap, which has been through the jaws of other sealions, and is looking decidedly the worse for wear. Anyone know of a Sealion repellent? Reminder to self: Next time, WIRE the cages to the trap; plastic ties arent enough, even 10 of them.

The crabs were all heavy and full when I cooked them; often the rock claws are disappointingly empty and slightly bitter; but this time they were full and sweet. Compared to my Dungeness catch more recently, (which were emaciated), the crabs must have been feeding well lately.

Spider Crab, Spider Crab, does whatever..

Ever catch a spider crab in your trap? They are bright red/purple crabs, with long shiny legs, unlike either Dungeness, Rock or Red crabs. In fact, these are KELP CRABs,(Pugettia Producta) and are vegetarian. So how come they end up in your net? They can mistake your rope for a kelp frond. While these are indeed very tasty crabs, I do not know how legal it is to catch these. Standard rules for non-Dungie crabs, is that they muct be wider than 4" at the widest part of the body; but because of Kelp crabs body shape, this seems unlikely to be attained. I have looked for rules on the california fishing regulations website, but so far, have not found any guidance. Sure wish they fished these commercially though; the crab claws are extremely sweet and attractive on a plate. Sure to draw admiring comments when you have guests over!

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Dungeness Season is Slow

Since the Season opened last November, pickings at Pacifica Pier have tended to be rather thin on the ground. A couple of Dungeness is all most people expect. I was out last week, and I caught 2, and when I got them home and cooked them, there was not that much meat inside them; and what was in the shell was fairly dehydrated looking, as if the crabs had been living on fumes over the past week.

Still, the weather was great, and its always nice to meet interesting new people.

Overall, using hook and line seems to be generally more successful at Pacifica than using traps, because generally the sealions make life difficult as they systematically pry open one trap after another. The seafloor doesnt seem to make life easier either; mostly the bait comes up covered with sand, as if the bottom foot or so is a continual cloud of sand, which cant make it easier for the crabs to find the bait. Last week however, I noticed others were having some luck, and the sealions werent around, so I put down a trap and almost immediately pulled up a keeper. If I had known how thin the meat was, I'd probably have thrown it back, but still it indicated that when the weather is calm, traps do seem to have better luck than when its choppy.

The word on the street is that either an incoming tide or an outgoing tide is fine, either side of high tide slack water; but it seemed that all afternoon, after high tide was past, the fishing was lousy, despite a decent morning. Time to head to the chinese market for my crab dinner methinks.